Penn State's James Franklin is kind of a jerk.
That's not intended as an insult to Franklin; he has rubbed people the wrong way and cared little, but that's practically a prerequisite for his field of work. Coaching a college football team is a high-pressure job, and a headstrong personality is the most effective way to establish leadership over a team. Franklin has been highly successful, and now he's challenging Urban Meyer for the title of top recruiter in the Big Ten.
Franklin's first challenge was at Vanderbilt, where he took over a perennial loser with the highest academic standards in the SEC. He turned the sad sack Commodores around, winning nine games for the second and third time in school history in 2012 and 2013. Even more impressively, he brought a top-25 recruiting class to Vanderbilt in his final year.
James Franklin accepted his second challenge in January 2014, when he became the 16th head coach in Penn State football history. In the process he poached five Vanderbilt commits, a strange turn of events for a coach who once said recruits who reneged on verbal commitments lacked integrity and honor.
James Franklin has taken to State College like a fish to water. In a speech to boosters in Baltimore in May 2014, four months after taking the Penn State job, Franklin marked three states as his recruiting base: Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey.
The new coach aspires to dominate in an area extending six hours in any direction from Penn State's campus. That, of course, includes the Baltimore-Washington region considered by the University of Maryland as its base.
"I consider this in-state. I consider New Jersey in-state," Franklin told the crowd. While there are other schools in the region, "they might as well shut them down because they don't have a chance."
It's common for coaches to give boosters red meat in these speeches, but Franklin really let his jerk flag fly. He dismissively asked if Maryland, a school where he was once the coach-in-waiting, was on the schedule ("Yeah, we do? Somewhere back there"), prompting an angry response from Maryland coach Randy Edsall. Maryland's captains refused to shake hands with Penn State's captains when they played in November.
No matter how provocative he is, Franklin's rise has given Ohio State a tougher time in the mid-Atlantic. In 2015, the first full recruiting class in which Meyer and Franklin were going head-to-head, Penn State landed six of the top seven Pennsylvania recruits; Ohio State landed none. The Buckeyes did secure Maryland's top player (Isaiah Prince), but Penn State landed five of New Jersey's top ten players.
In all, 19 of Penn State's 25 recruits in the 2015 class were "in-state" talent, part of the 14th-best recruiting class in the country. Ohio State's class was better, but Franklin has established the Nittany Lions as OSU's top challenger in the region.
Penn State's 2016 recruiting class is off to another strong start. Three of Pennsylvania's top ten (Michael Menet, Miles Sanders and Connor McGovern) are Penn State commits, and only one is committed elsewhere. Franklin has snagged the top players in Pennsylvania (Menet), Maryland (Shane Simmons), New York (Jake Zembiec), and Massachusetts (Danny Dalton), as well as Michigan's second-ranked player (Lavert Hill) and four-star cornerback Zechariah McPhearson.
What's interesting about Franklin's success is that he is doing it without venturing much into Ohio. Penn State landed only one Ohioan in 2014, none in 2015, and one in 2016 to date. Neither player is or was among the state's elite.
For now, Penn State's 2016 class ranks 13th in the country. To improve, Penn State will have to perform better on the field than in Franklin's first year.
Penn State lived on the razor's edge in 2014. It started the season 4-0, including wins against Central Florida in Ireland and Rutgers in the Scarlet Knights' Big Ten opener, but it finished the regular season with a 2-6 slump. Penn State played eight one-possession games, including losses to Michigan, Ohio State (in double overtime), Maryland and Illinois.
Penn State squeaked by Boston College in the Pinstripe Bowl to finish 7-6 – no mean feat for a team with 46 scholarship players, but not enough to sustain top-10 recruiting classes. Now that the NCAA has lifted Penn State's scholarship restrictions, though, we might see PSU's full potential.
With James Franklin in the fold, Penn State will be Ohio State's top rival for recruits in the mid-Atlantic and New England. The Nittany Lions may not be challenging the Buckeyes on their home turf yet, but with continued success they will. As long as the Big Ten's most ruthless coach is at State College, Penn State will be a major threat to Ohio State's regional recruiting.
